Disgrace

by digby

Thanks to reader Samela for pointing out this incredible series in the Chicago Tribune outlining contractor abuses in Iraq. It’s rather surprising that no other papers or any of the networks have bothered to report the story (at least that I’m aware of) but I can understand it. The sheer volume on inhumane activity that the Bush administration has endorsed or perpetrated is so huge that it’s hard to keep up.

The top U.S. commander in Iraq has ordered sweeping changes for privatized military support operations after confirming violations of human-trafficking laws and other abuses by contractors involving possibly thousands of foreign workers on American bases, according to records obtained by the Tribune.

[…]

The State Department launched an investigation and promised other actions earlier this year in response to a series published Oct. 9-10 by the Tribune, “Pipeline to Peril,” that detailed many of the abuses now cited in the memos.

The stories disclosed the often-illicit networks used to recruit low-skilled laborers from some of the world’s most impoverished and remote locales to work in menial jobs on American bases in Iraq.

Although other firms also have contracts supporting the military in Iraq, the U.S. has outsourced vital support operations to Halliburton subsidiary KBR at an unprecedented scale, at a cost to the U.S. of more than $12 billion as of late last year.

This issue with contractors and human trafficking is not unique to Iraq. We experienced problems with them in Bosnia, too:

…[he] witnessed coworkers and supervisors literally buying and selling women for their own personal enjoyment, and employees would brag about the various ages and talents of the individual slaves they had purchased.”

…women and girls were handed over to bar owners and told to perform sex acts to pay for their costumes.The women who refused were locked in rooms and withheld food and outside contact for days or weeks. After this time they are told to dance naked on table tops and sit with clients. If the women still refuse to perform sex acts with the customers they are beaten and raped in the rooms by the bar owners and their associates. They are told if they go to the police they will be arrested for prostitution and being an illegal immigrant.”

This problem is compounded by the fact that there are a lot of questions as to whether or not there is any legal remedy. The military appears to be saying they will require contracts to include protections against human trafficking and abuses, but there’s no word on how such contracts can be enforced or whether they fall under under US or Iraqi law.

Last week someone asked the president about this:

Q Thank you, Mr. President. It’s an honor to have you here. I’m a first-year student in South Asia studies. My question is in regards to private military contractors. Uniform Code of Military Justice does not apply to these contractors in Iraq. I asked your Secretary of Defense a couple months ago what law governs their actions.

THE PRESIDENT: I was going to ask him. Go ahead. (Laughter.) Help. (Laughter.)

Q I was hoping your answer might be a little more specific. (Laughter.) Mr. Rumsfeld answered that Iraq has its own domestic laws which he assumed applied to those private military contractors. However, Iraq is clearly not currently capable of enforcing its laws, much less against — over our American military contractors. I would submit to you that in this case, this is one case that privatization is not a solution. And, Mr. President, how do you propose to bring private military contractors under a system of law?

THE PRESIDENT: I appreciate that very much. I wasn’t kidding — (laughter.) I was going to — I pick up the phone and say, Mr. Secretary, I’ve got an interesting question. (Laughter.) This is what delegation — I don’t mean to be dodging the question, although it’s kind of convenient in this case, but never — (laughter.) I really will — I’m going to call the Secretary and say you brought up a very valid question, and what are we doing about it? That’s how I work. I’m — thanks. (Laughter.)

Despite all the hilarity, this is actually quite an important question. From Guantanamo to illegal wiretapping to military contractors, the law has been twisted or ignored by this administration. In the case of contractors who participate directly in the conflict, the law ironically suggests that they are “unlawful combatants.” If they are caught breaking laws in Iraq, they fall under no enforceable legal system and are merely sent home. Meanwhile, the unlawful combatants we capture, many of whom have now been found to be factually innocent, are held indefinitely in Guantanamo and in secret prisons around the world.

You will all likely recall that strange moment a couple of months ago when General Peter Perfect publicly contradicted Rumsfeld on the issue of whether or not an American soldier or marine was honor bound to stop abuses if he or she saw them happening. Pace said yes, Rumsfeld said they should just be “reported.” Guess what?

…there have been at least six joint U.S.-Iraqi inspections of detention centers, most of them run by Iraq’s Shiite Muslim-dominated Interior Ministry. Two sources involved with the inspections, one Iraqi official and one U.S. official, said abuse of prisoners was found at all the sites visited through February. U.S. military authorities confirmed that signs of severe abuse were observed at two of the detention centers.

But U.S. troops have not responded by removing all the detainees, as they did in November. Instead, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials, only a handful of the most severely abused detainees at a single site were removed for medical treatment. Prisoners at two other sites were removed to alleviate overcrowding. U.S. and Iraqi authorities left the rest where they were.

This practice of leaving the detainees in place has raised concerns that detainees now face additional threats. It has also prompted fresh questions from the inspectors about whether the United States has honored a pledge by Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that U.S. troops would attempt to stop inhumane treatment if they saw it.

[…]

The Iraqi official familiar with the joint inspections said detainees who are not moved to other facilities are left vulnerable. “They tell us, ‘If you leave us here, they will kill us,’ ” said the Iraqi official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because, he said, he and other Iraqis involved with inspections had received death threats.

The U.S. official involved in the inspections, who would not be identified by name, described in an e-mail the abuse found during some of the visits since the Nov. 13 raid: “Numerous bruises on the arms, legs and feet. A lot of the Iraqis had separated shoulders and problems with their hands and fingers too. You could also see strap marks on some of their backs.”

“I was not in charge of the team who went to the sites. If so, I would have taken them out,” the U.S. official wrote, referring to the detainees. “We set a precedent and we were given guidance” from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “but for some reason it is not being followed.”

Maj. Gen. John D. Gardner, the commander of U.S. detention operations in Iraq, said in an interview, “I would strongly disagree with the statement that Americans are seeing cases of abuse and not doing anything.”

There are other quotes by generals saying that no abuse of any kind has been seen, while other military officers admit that there has been torture including burning with cigarettes, dislocated shoulders from hanging from ropes etc. And the beat(ings) go on.

The US government has lost all moral authority and no longer even theoretically adheres to a consistent set of principles. It indefinitely imprisons citizens and non-citizens alike as non-combatants, some of them innocent, saying the “battlefield” comprises the whole planet, including Smalltown USA. Yet we place our own non-combatants on the real battlefield and protect them by saying there is no legal system that applies them. The taxpayers of this country are paying for human trafficking. The administration created a series of secret prisons for the sole purpose of circumventing American laws. The government advances theories of executive authority that kings and dictators could appreciate. And we are now in the process of enabling the country we liberated from a tyrant to create tyrannical institutions of their own in the name of democratic government.

Every one of those things will make us less safe and yet the perpetrators insist that they are all done to protect us. And they are finally admitting that most of this is done purely for domestic political reasons.

My God.

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